CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I spent about eight delightful hours in that other dimension. The kidnapping, high-speed chase and bullets going right by my head had burned up a whole lot of body sugars. In fact, I was still stacking zetas that morning when my doorbell rang. Not just once but several times.

I roused myself, stumbled down the stairs, peeked through the peephole and was surprised to see that it wasn’t my mother, who was the person most likely to roust me in the morning. In fact, I was just surprised period.

Standing on my front steps was the mysterious albino woman I’d last seen conversing with Catalina on the Key several days before. On that occasion, she had been decked out in hot pink. Today, she was wearing a gaudy floral print jumpsuit. I guess if you were an albino lady, you saw yourself as a blank canvas and the idea was to add color.

I opened the door, and she smiled at me very animatedly with some extremely white teeth. She’d either had them capped or albinos had unnaturally white chompers.

“You’re Willie Cuesta?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“Have you? That’s interesting, because I’ve been thinking about you too.”

That pleased her, and she batted her eyelashes. “Oh, yes? Why is that?”

“I want to know what you were speaking about with Catalina Cordero a few days ago outside the Colombian coffee bar on Key Biscayne.”

She seemed to peer back into the recent past and locate Catalina in her memory.

She nodded. “You will find out about that soon enough, but I have something even more important to tell you.”

“What’s that?”

She flicked her white eyebrows at me. “I’m bringing you a message from a man who is an old friend of yours.”

“Who?”

“Raymundo Ramírez. He says he wants you to go visit him at the federal prison, pronto. If you want to know about the Catalina Cordero kidnapping and that shooting last night, you need to go see him now.”

I squinted into her pink-tinged eyes and realized that the prisoner who had called me the night before from the local penitentiary must have been Ramírez. It also occurred to me that the albino lady might have been the woman in the red wig and the oversized sunglasses who had rammed my car the day of the kidnapping. Maybe.

But she didn’t give me a chance to ask about that or about her exchange with Catalina outside the coffee joint.

“Go see him today. Don’t wait.”

She flared her eyes. Then she looked both ways down the street and jumped into the SUV at the curb. As the door opened, I saw in the driver’s seat the same scar-faced man I had first seen at the golf course giving José the yellow slip of paper. She climbed in, and they careened away.

I closed the door, walked back upstairs and sat down. Her visit was as disturbing as it was surprising.

Raymundo Ramírez was also known as “Ratón” Ramírez—mouse or rat, depending on what mood he was in.

After the death of Pablo Escobar, “Ratón” had headed a branch of the Medellín cocaine cartel until he was captured several years later and extradited to the United States. Before getting nabbed, he had gained a reputation for world-class nastiness. He had left legions of people dead in his greedy path. He was also one of the biggest fish the DEA had ever landed in Colombia—right up there with Escobar, the Ochoa family and the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers.

During my time as an Intelligence Unit detective, I had once participated in a bust of his operatives who had tried to bring a cache of coke in through the Miami River. Because of that, I had been called to testify briefly at his trial. He had gazed at me during my time on the stand the way he had at the other witnesses against him, with a devilish smile and stony stare that let you know you were worse than dead if he ever got out again.

The albino woman had said Ratón could reveal to me some information about the kidnapping. He was locked up, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he had men in Miami and had that information. Colombian cartel bosses, like U.S. Mafia moguls, used prisons like executive offices. They continued to operate behind bars.

Now he was letting me know he was involved in my case. Of course, it shouldn’t have surprised me. It’s been said that in Miami, almost every twenty-dollar bill in circulation has traces of cocaine on it.

I could wait and let Ratón reach out and touch me again, but the next time it might be murderous. I decided I better take the initiative. First, I called Alice Arden and told her about my visit from the albino lady.

“You’re kidding me, kiddo.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Do you know who that is? That’s Griselda Campos, Ratón’s longtime true love—or as true as those kinds of people get. She’s famous in the Colombian criminal underworld. Down there, she’s known as ‘Blanca Nieves’—‘Snow White’—not only because of her color but because of her ties to the cocaine world.”

“What is she doing on the loose and knocking on my door? Why isn’t she incarcerated?”

“Because the Colombian drug police have never pinned anything on her. It’s not a crime to be someone’s squeeze.”

“And a charming and tasteful squeeze she is.”

“Don’t fall in love, laddie. Ratón will have your hide.”

“I’ll control myself.”

We hung up then, and I called Bill Escalona, the warden of the federal prison southwest of the city. I hadn’t talked to him in a few years. Various times during my career at Miami PD, I had traveled there to interview inmates. Bill hadn’t forgotten me, and he took my call.

“Long time no hear, Willie. What can I do for you?”

“I’m not on the police force anymore, Bill. I’m in business for myself, but I still need to talk with one of your hotel guests.”

“Which one is that?”

“Ratón Ramírez.”

“You don’t say.”

“Unfortunately, I do say. Is it possible?”

“If he wants to talk to you, it’s fine with me . . . and I don’t think it will be a problem. Ratón doesn’t get that many visitors, and he likes to gab. When do you want to come?”

“Why don’t I drive over now?”

“Why don’t you? Can I ask what this is all about?”

“The kidnapping on Key Biscayne.”

“Well, Ratón didn’t do it. He was here.”

“It won’t hurt to talk to him.”

“I’ll be waiting for you, Willie.”

I took the same route I’d driven to find Don Carlos at the horse farm but got off the turnpike a couple of exits earlier. I traversed similarly flat agricultural land until prison towers suddenly appeared just beyond and above an orange grove.

I parked in the lot, but before I got out, I placed a call to Alice Arden. She didn’t pick up, so I left her a message. Just in case they didn’t let me back out, she would know where to commence looking.

A chain-link fence surrounded the perimeter of the prison, with razor wire coiled both along the bottom and the top. A surveillance camera and a two-way speaker hung near the door.

I announced myself and the gate buzzed and clicked open. The same thing happened at the door to the main building. I didn’t find a flesh-and-blood guard until the metal detector in the lobby. I laid my handgun and keys in the loose change dish and passed through. Bill was waiting on the other side of the detector. He was tall and narrow-shouldered and wore a striped shirt, pinstriped pants and a striped tie. I guess for a prison warden, stripes was a kind of fashion statement. Bill was a traditionalist.

He escorted me past the glass case full of athletic trophies won by the prison teams. I wouldn’t want to battle some of those guys for rebounds under the boards. It could get very dangerous indeed.

Bill saw that my gun was locked away by the attendants behind the bulletproof glass and assured me it would be waiting for me when I left. Then they buzzed us into the prison proper.

Bill led me down a wide, tiled hall with offices on each side. What you noticed right away was how clean everything was. Then again, the cleaning staff—the prisoners themselves—had plenty of time to sweep, mop, dust and polish.

At the end of that hall, we stopped. Bill waved at the surveillance camera above the metal door, and we were buzzed through. The place had been remodeled since I’d last visited. We entered a cellblock, a lockdown area, built in what might be called “prison modern.” That meant two stories of cells constructed around an enclosed communal area, like a central courtyard. Tables and chairs stood around that communal area, like a café, and a few prisoners in blue uniforms sat around sipping coffee and conversing.

“Looks like a lockup designed by Starbucks,” I said.

“Kind of, but no cappuccino,” Bill said.

We walked through that block, Bill exchanging waves and greetings with the inmates, all of whom were dressed in baby blue prison garb. He seemed to be extremely popular, but when the warden controlled to a degree when you got out, it was probably impossible to gauge their true feelings.

We headed down another hallway.

“So how is Ratón getting on here?” I asked. “Is he causing you any trouble?”

He shook his head. “Not at the moment. Ratón has seemingly embraced the Lord. In fact, there are days he is convinced he is the Lord.”

He glanced at me with a discreet smile.

“So he’s trying to play the crazy card,” I said.

Bill shrugged. “It’s not for me to say. Ratón Ramírez is a rare individual. Who knows? Maybe someday he’ll ascend right out of here and into heaven under his own power,” he said with a sly smile.

We were buzzed through another door and exited the building into an isolated corner of the prison yard. In that area, a garden had been groomed. It was an impressive garden, not big, but lush, full of tropical flowers and fleshy plants—amaryllis, fire bush and begonias the size of elephants ears, all of them crowded together on an island of green about twenty feet across. It was like a small section of the Amazon jungle just inside the prison walls.

An inmate in baby blue was on his knees, weeding one corner of that miniature jungle. Bill called out to him. “Ramírez!”

Ratón Ramírez turned with a trowel in his hand. I recognized him right away. Then again, given his face, recognizing him was no big feat of memory.

He was short and dark, with an unusually small head and a nose that turned up as much as out. Because his nose lifted his top lip, you saw his small, yellowed teeth. He very much resembled a mouse to start with, and in prison, he had grown a graying beard, which made him look even more like a member of the rodent family.

The same thought occurred to me that had crossed my mind the first time I’d seen Ratón years before. A guy that funny-looking had nothing to lose, so why not enter the most violent industry in the universe.

Bill introduced me and made Ratón break out in a big smile.

“Oh, yes. Mr. Willie Cuesta and I, we already know each other.”

I explained to Bill my brief appearance at Ratón’s trial.

“Well, it’s nice to know you’ve stayed in touch,” Bill said.

Ratón picked up a Bible that was lying on the ground next to him. He apparently kept it close at hand at all times, much like he’d kept a pistol next to him night and day in his violent past.

Bill led us back into the building to a visitation hall. It was a large, cafeteria-like room, with long tables and folding chairs in neat lines. Visiting hours were not in session at the moment, but a crew of inmates was cleaning the place. The only available table and seats were in the corner labeled “Family Area.” Ratón and I sat across from each other in front of a mural depicting the Lion King and the Little Mermaid.

Ratón offered me a cigarette, and when I declined, he lit up on his own. He took a deep drag and exhaled luxuriously, clouding the air between us. Then he clouded the conversation.

“So what do you think of my garden?” he asked.

What I really thought was this: Ratón, you’re a good gardener, which isn’t a surprise because you had years of experience growing coca leaf. But I didn’t say that.

“It’s a very nice garden.”

He tapped the Bible with his finger. “It all started in a garden, you know? We all come from God’s garden.”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“And it’s true. I know. I was there.”

His gaze grew a bit glassy. Ratón was laying the loony on me.

“Is that right?”

“Yes, it is. I have a special liaison with the Lord. I have always existed, and I will not die. I was there in the beginning with Eve and the snake, I exist here now and I will endure into the future.” His eyes widened, and he beamed at me beatifically.

I responded to his rapture with an understanding smile.

“I’m certain that’s true,” I said.

From one point of view, Ratón was being perfectly honest when he said he had been in “the garden.” He had once operated his own Garden of Eden in Colombia, an enclave in the Amazonian region, secluded from civilization, where he produced world-class amounts of cocaine. Accounts of that hideaway had come out in the trial.

In that garden, he had been a kind of god. Given his fierce reputation for bloodletting, no one dared try to deceive him or keep secrets from him. He chose which ladies to lie with, and he populated the planet. Given his wealth, he experienced every excess known to man. He also decided who lived and who died, especially the latter.

And from that garden he had sent out his angels—smugglers—to spread his grace. It was called cocaine. Eventually, he found himself doing pitched battle with the powers of darkness: the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In this particular version of Genesis, Ratón had lost.

But before the fall, Ratón had curried favor with poor Colombians by spreading around a small part of his lucre—building a few homes, buying some food. I remembered from the trial how Ratón had painted himself as a Christ figure now being crucified.

“I have done much for my people,” he told the judge. “For some of them, I walk on water.”

Colombia was like anywhere else: power corrupts. But Colombian drug money corrupted astronomically.

Unfortunately, Ratón hadn’t been able to convert the DEA agents and members of the Colombian military who had captured him after besieging his hideout for six weeks. Now he was locked up for the rest of his life. I figured when he heard the sentence he’d been presented with a choice: live a life of correctional deprivation like all other prisoners or claim a divine nature.

Now he was the strangest looking messiah of all time.

“So you want to ask me some questions,” he said.

“Well, I’m told you have information to impart about the kidnapping of Catalina Cordero.”

He nodded slowly, sagaciously. “Yes, I have received some messages about those awful events.”

“Messages from who?”

He flicked his eyebrows. “From the spirits.”

“I see.”

I was more inclined to believe that if he had any information at all, he had received it from the prison grapevine or from his cohorts on the outside. But where he had come by it didn’t matter much to me, and if he wanted to play crazy, he could do that too. I was reminded of the New York Mafia boss who had walked the streets of the Lower East Side in his bathrobe, playing the weirdo, while he ran his crime family with an iron hand.

“So what is it you want to tell me?”

He leaned toward me and spoke in a near whisper. “I can help you get that girl back.”

“You can? How can you do that?”

Ratón shrugged. “As I said, the spirits are communicating certain information to me about this kidnapping.”

“Have the spirits told you who spirited her away?”

He closed his eyes and waved a hand slowly over his head, rubbing his fingers together, as if he were plucking silent messages from the air.

“I have seen some faces.”

“They were wearing masks.”

“I mean their true faces and other facts are coming to me.”

“Like what?”

He opened his eyes and took a drag from his cigarette. “First of all, the spirits have told me that the girl was grabbed by mistake. The kidnappers really wanted to capture José Estrada, but they made an error.”

I shrugged. “I could have told you that, and I don’t have any special relationship with the spirits, Ratón.”

That brought the hint of a smile to his thin rodent-like lips. “Yes, but you don’t know why José Estrada was to be kidnapped in the first place or by who.”

“What do you mean why? I assume they’ll demand a ransom and that’s the reason for the snatch. Why should there be another reason?”

He smoked and smiled. “The Estradas have many friends but many enemies as well.”

“So you’re telling me this isn’t a simple business transaction? That it’s not a rudimentary kidnap for ransom?”

“That’s exactly what I am telling you, Mr. Willie. There is much about this matter that you do not understand. Much about the Estradas, their American partner Conrad Nettles, not to mention the girl herself. And you will not resolve it until you do understand.”

“But you can help me comprehend it. Is that what you’re saying?”

He waved a hand over his head again. “Yes. With the special aid of the spirits, I can help you find the girl.”

“So? Where is she?”

He stopped smiling and fixed on me deep in thought, as if he were studying a flight plan for his smuggling operation. “What’s in it for me?”

He said that without an iota of insanity.

“What do you want?”

“I want to be sent back to a prison in my country to complete my sentence.”

I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying what I was thinking. I knew that was never going to happen. If Ratón went back to Colombia, by the end of the first week, he would bribe his way out or blow his way out. The U.S. authorities had spent too much money to capture him to allow that to happen.

“I’m not sure the authorities will agree to that.”

He showed his rat’s teeth now. “Then they can expect more kidnappings and maybe worse. You can tell them that.”

His burst of anger took me aback.

“Are you saying it was your people who pulled off the Estrada kidnapping?”

He glared at me. “I haven’t said anything of the kind, Cuesta.”

But that was exactly what he had implied.

“Why would you go after the Estradas, Ratón?”

He shook his head, took one last, long drag of his cigarette, flicked it to the floor, smothered the butt with his shoe and grabbed his Bible.

“I told you only that I have received messages from the spirits. No court would convict a poor individual, locked up and loco, on the basis of voices he hears from the other world.”

Ratón was giving me the rationale for the whole madman act. He could tell me certain things, but only under the cover of craziness.

I leaned toward him. “Tell me where the girl is.”

He spoke in a whisper, although the only witnesses within hearing distance were the Lion King and the Little Mermaid.

“Someone will be in contact to tell you where to look.”

Then he stood up, clutched his Bible to his chest and that glazed look suddenly appeared in his eyes just like before. Once again, he became the wild man of the heavens.

“And I will be watching you from above every step of the way, Willie.”